Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Rain has washed the city
Leaving streets slick
City lights
Look brighter
As the rainy haze lifts

The ground drinks
Feeding the grass
Once winter white
Then sepia spring
Now green growth appears

April showers
To end the month
I am looking to May
With hopes of flowers
And sun to warm them

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And here ends my month of poems - it has been quite a challenge. There are some I feel good about - others missed the mark. But each has been a way to push me to write, to imagine and to share.

Now I am hoping for that May weather so I can get out more with my camera and concentrate on the photographs.

Scylla are naughty flowers
Not content to grow
In the confines of a garden bed
They spread where they will
Playing outside the lines
I love their saucy attitude
Small but determined
They bring colour
To the sepia of early spring.

AllegroSpringtime is upon us. The birds celebrate her return with festive song,and murmuring streams are softly caressed by the breezes.Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar, casting their dark mantle over heaven,Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their charming songs once more.

My mother always made her cakes from scratch
No cake mixes from boxes
Nor store bought creations
She lovingly stirred in fresh ingredients

I longed for a doll cake
Displayed in the window at Woolworth's
A cheap plastic doll
Surrounded by tasteless cake
She stood
In her super sweet icing decorated dress
My six year old self
Thought she was lovely

But I got homemade
And learned that a fancy exterior
Does not mean goodness inside

Now I stir in fresh ingredients
Laced with love
No GMOs No trans-fats
Our home is infused with the scent of cinnamon
I make it - homemade

My mother long gone
Guides my arm as I stir
Homemade is best I learned long ago
It's the only way to stir in love

Monday, April 7, 2014

Walking in the Old Port
I watched videos in an app
Telling stories of the port
From past to present

Looking through the layers
of history
Seeing the changes
Imagining

Traces of the past
Words on a building
New uses for old places
Constant change

Former glory now tarnished
Once a major hub
When ships were king
Now rust sets in

Still a port
Ships sail into the seaway
Then far into the great lakes
It still connects to other lands

Now too a place for walking
cycling skating learning
fishing boating
New uses for old places

It lives again

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Photos:
1: Looking towards the clock tower and the Jacques Cartier Bridge
2. Marché Bonsecours - once an actual market, now filled with shops with Quebec merchandise
3. Once warehouses for the goods that arrived in the port. Shop fronts were on the street behind
4. Grain elevators - no longer in use. With the opening of the seaway in the early 1950s the loading of grain onto ships moved further inland closer to where the grain was grown.
5. Harbour Commision Building built 1874-78
6. Ship in the harbour